Stephen Michael Vaughan – 50th Reunion Essay

Stephen Michael Vaughan

6 White Mesa Trail

Placitas, NM 87043

svaughan1@comcast.net

505-404-8648

Spouse(s): Dr. Andrea Cohen (1989)

Child(ren): Brooke Emily Vaughan (1993)

Education: University of Texas School of Law (Austin), 1973 JD

Career: litigator in Houston 40 years

Avocations: environment, politics, golf

College: Branford

In August 1965 I had never visited the Northeast, much less Yale. By the end of freshman year the intimidation and terror of being at Yale was gone, and I had almost caught up with the Exeter and Andover types, academically at least.

I applied to Yale because I thought it would help me get into Yale Law School. It didn’t. Nevertheless, the decision was the best I ever made. Yale’s focus on undergraduate education was explicit and obvious.

The Yale experience was the most important four years of my life. Yale indelibly imprinted itself on my psyche and character. I am not entirely sure how.

I spent junior year at the Universitat Hamburg, along with four other Yalies. That was the MLK/RFK assassination year. It was also the year our class tried to catch up with Berkeley, chemically speaking.

The upshot is that I spent my first year with my nose in the books, and my third year being shocked and enlightened to see America and fundamental changes through foreigners’ eyes. And Yale itself had become a different place when I returned for senior year.

I still remember 1967 in Hamburg, when I heard several young Germans walking through a park cheerily chanting “Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh.” It made me angry. But I recall the moment because it was then when I first started thinking about the war critically, and about how jaundiced and parochial my viewpoint might be. It was only after that that I recall Vietnam, or politics, having any particular emotional content for me. I was completely in synch with the larger Yale community sentiment by the time I got home.

I interview applicants occasionally these days. I tell them what I expect their best experience will be at Yale: sitting down to two or three meals a day with people who will challenge them intellectually with every bite of food, will argue any side of any issue. That was the best of my experience at Yale. I think that may be why I feel so comfortable encountering old friends, or just classmates, at the reunions. The intellectual challenge presented by my classmates was startling, and it put me on intellectual alert for the rest of my life.

One of my Branford classmates was an active liberal while at Yale, but is now a nationally known conservative spokesman. Another was the most outspoken conservative I had ever met as of 1969 but is today a dedicated liberal. Maybe that’s just a sign that we Yalies are fervent in our beliefs, once we come to them. And that we left Yale open-minded and still evolving.

By contrast, I changed far more politically while at Yale than I have since, although the direction (left) has not changed.

Perhaps that is what I recognize in my Yale experience: It was transformative. Maybe more so for an unsophisticate like me than others. And perhaps that is why I am more consciously grateful to Yale.